Mystic Post has been investigating the incredible case of weeping statues that occurred in the quiet  town of Lakeridge, Va. located about 20 miles south of Washington, D.C.  We are working on a film documentary of the events.

We now have exclusive information that the Chancellor of the Arlington Diocese, Monsignor William Reineke was the central figure in the sudden shut down of the Church’s investigation into the sensational case of weeping Madonnas that occured in the outskirts of Washington DC in the early 1990’s.

Fr. Reineke committed suicide in 1992 after being confronted by one of his victims.

Channel 7 news of Washington, D.C. did an extensive investigative report on Fr. Reineke’s abusive activities called “50 Years A Secret”

The Weeping Statues

It is important to note right from the start that what you are about to hear involves a supernatural event that has no equal, no precedent in the history of the world.  

Never  has a supernatural event been so closely observed and witnessed  by so many credible people, including journalists, TV reporters, lawyers, doctors, federal government employees.  Hundreds, if not thousands, of people saw  statues and icons weep, profusely at times, like never before..  

One of the witnesses is James Carney. Mr. Carney is a graduate of  Harvard law school and a former law school professor and assistant dean. Mr. Carney wrote a book about the phenomena called “The Seton Miracles: Weeping Statues and other wonders.

 Mr. Carney’s book is a comprehensive account of what occurred on the outskirts of our nation’s capital in 1991-1993.   And what occurred is the most extensive display of weeping statues and accompanying physical phenomena in the Catholic Church’s history.  The phenomena included hundreds of statues, crucifixes and even glass images which wept tears and blood before thousands of astonished witnesses. 

Trailer for Documentary

Father James Bruse, a humble parish priest, received stigmata wounds replicating the five crucifixion wounds of Christ.

Jim Carney and those who have investigated the incident argue that never in the entire history of the Catholic Church, has there been a greater manifestation of the supernatural or momentous occurrence of weeping statues and other physical signs of God’s presence through the Blessed Virgin Mary than what took place on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.

What makes this case particularly interesting is not only  the unprecedented phenomenon of weeping statues of the Virgin Mary  but that the secular/ mainstream  media widely  covered the events.   

The story of the weeping statues and the priest experiencing the stigmata quickly  became a worldwide media sensation. 

The Washington Post and a throng of local, national and international news organizations descended onto the community to report and investigate the miraculous occurrences. To this day, the spontaneous media frenzy that engulfed the unexplained miraculous events stands as a singular moment in television history in the coverage of mystical religious phenomena.

But before we dive into the sensational details of the weeping statues it is important to understand that two men who had primary administrative authority over the events, Fr. Dan Hamilton, the parish priest  of St Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church in Lakeridge Virginia and the Arlington Diocese’s Chancellor, Monsignor William  Reineke, were secretly and deeply  involved in the dark world of pediphilia. 

And this matters greatly because it is our contention that an open and objective investigation into the supernatural phenomena was never conducted because of the moral depravity and the demonic  secrets  of the individuals in position to investigate.  It is our belief that:

1.  The administrators did not seek the truth because they were uncomfortable with the publicity and so they sought to move the spotlight away from the Diocese of Arlington by  silencing any talk about the event. 

2. As the world now know,  the power of silence to hide the truth was an effective tool the Catholic Church frequently used to cover up difficult, even sinister activities like the sexual abuse of 1000’s of minors  among the clergy. The  Vatican has said the clerical sex abuse scandal is such a game-changing catastrophe for the Catholic Church that the Pope called it the church’s “own 9/11”.

 The head of the Arlington Diocese in Virginia, Bishop Keating, was keenly aware that statues of the Virgin Mary were weeping in his diocese, in fact,  a statue wept in his office before his disbelieving eyes. Despite his own eye-witness account he nevertheless chose to pursue a strategy of silence for unknown reasons.  The Bishop stonewalled all inquiries from the media and for many parishioners this left the impression that the Bishop had perhaps condemned the phenomena.   

Canon Law expert, Fr. Michael Smith Foster writes: “The bishop obviously believed that this approach of waiting and watching was the best response to the situation, but it is difficult to reconcile with an Ordinary’s duties under canon law because the bishop is responsible for public worship in the diocese and so it is his responsibility to discern what is apparently miraculous and to approve of the gathering for public worship. Should an apparently miraculous event occur, the people may petition the bishop to investigate what is happening. If the bishop determines that there is sufficient evidence for an investigation he should begin the process which would lead to a decision concerning the supernatural character of the event. Above all it is the bishops responsibility to assure the people are not being deceived or that something authentically miraculous has occurred so that others who wish to commemorate the sacred event may do so  in their worship. Bishops must be diligent in their search for the truth, open to the presence of the miraculous and able to reject what is inauthentic or false.”

But sadly no investigation ever took place. 

Our Lady wept in front of the entire world like never before. Her tears were recorded  on television cameras for all the world to see, yet, in the end,  the Arlington Diocese chose to coldly ignore Our Lady’s messages of tears.  The Church chose silence and most disturbing of it all is that the clerics in position to investigate the matter were deeply troubled men.  

The world would soon discover that the cleric in charge of investigating the weeping statues and the stigmatic priest, Chancellor Monsignor William Reineke, was a serial sexual predator of minors.  

Sensationally,  Fr. Reineke was also in charge of investigating claims of pedophilia among priests for the Arlington diocese.  

All of this was made known after he  walked into a nondescript cornfield in Berryville, Virginia, near the Holy Cross Trappist Monastery with a loaded shotgun and killed himself. The Washington Post reported that while the statues were still weeping in August of 1992,  Fr. Reienke was confronted by one of his victims of his sexual abuse. The victim, Joe McDonald urged Fr. Reineke to get help and to resign from the priesthood. Two days after the confrontation Fr. Reineke shot himself. His death would leave behind a long shadow of untold secrets – secrets of both good and evil- secrets whose scope, decades later, are today just beginning to be fully understood. 

 

The primary theme that runs throughout this documentary is that the Church’s powerful culture of “Silence” stonewalled a proper investigation into the extraordinary case of weeping statues and that this appalling way of managing crises  was a root cause that allowed the secret clerical sexual  abuse of minors to metastasize inside the Church to the point of  almost destroying it.

Without being made aware of the culture  of  “silence” as a management technique and the scope of clerical sexual abuse of minors inside the Catholic Church, and in particular inside the Arlington Diocese (which we will go into more detail later) it becomes difficult to capture the sensational nature of  the incredible case of weeping statues of the Virgin Mary because over the years Catholics have been told by the diocese to “Move along, nothing to see here.” 

Well as it turns out, there is a lot to see and unpack here and  thanks to the great work and dedication to the truth by Mr. James Carney and others you will see that the story  of  the  Case of the Weeping Statues  of Northern Virginia is greater than any work of fiction. As they say: “Hollywood could not even make this up.”